San Francisco
attorney Jon Streeter on Friday was elected the 87th president of the State Bar
in an internal election by the Board of Governors.

Four third-year
board members had declared their candidacy to succeed San Francisco attorney
William N. Hebert as head of the 232,000-member organization, but Los Angeles
representative James Aguirre withdrew without explanation before voting began,
a State Bar spokesperson said.

Aguirre, the
lead attorney for the law firm of Richardson & Fair and house counsel for
the Automobile Club of Southern California, reserved comment when reached while
traveling after the meeting.

Angela Davis

Los Angeles
representative Angela Davis, an assistant U.S. attorney, was eliminated in the
first round of balloting, the spokesperson said, and Streeter received a
majority of votes in a second round, besting Michael Tenenbaum of Thousand
Oaks.

“I will work
hard to reestablish a sense of unity and restore the effectiveness and
integrity of the discipline system,” Streeter said after the vote was
announced. He indicated that rebuilding the Office of Chief Trial Counsel,
which lost its top prosecutor and four members of its executive staff earlier
this month, is among his top priorities.

The
newly-elected president also acknowledged questions of governance had recently
divided the board, and insisted that his tenure has “got to be a year of
reconciliation” for the organization.

“To be
effective, we must work together,” Streeter said, and vowed to be a leader who
would “try to find consensus but only after giving everyone in the room a fair
hearing.”

Streeter is a
partner at Keker & Van Nest and represented Marin, San Francisco and San
Mateo counties on the board. He served as chair of the board’s Stakeholders
Committee and leader of a project to secure legal help for veterans.

The attorney was
also vice-chairman of the California State Senate Commission on the Fair Administration
of Justice from 2005 to 2008, president of the Association of Business Trial
Lawyers of Northern California from 2006 to 2007, and president of the Bar
Association of San Francisco in 2004.

Other Activities

He headed the
American Inns of Court, Edward McFetridge Chapter, in 2007, and chaired of the
Lawyer Delegation for the Northern District of California to the Ninth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999 as well.

Streeter clerked
for U.S. Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards of the District of Columbia after
graduating from Stanford University and completing law school at UC Berkeley.
He spent 14 years with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP before moving to
Keker & Van Nest.

He is slated to
be sworn in during the State Bar Annual Meeting in September in Long Beach,
along with Los Angeles attorney Craig E. Holden, a partner with Lewis,
Brisbois, Bisgaard & Smith LLP who was elected to the board earlier this
month.